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Renzo's Rant

My Beef With David Goldstein

I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in my cozy little corner of it, before virtually every movie released in the last 3 months, I've been subjected to the whining of David Goldstein, the set painter whose job is threatened by movie pirates!

"Arrghh! Avast! Hand over all your gold doubloons and movie copyrights!"

Anyway, in case any of you haven't seen this commercial, I'll summarise his argument: he's a "set painter" who says that pirating movies puts his job at risk because he's "not a million dollar employee". Yeah, so we're to believe that you weren't paid to make this commercial? Unless you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart, it would seem that piracy has treated your wallet quite well. And while we're on the subject of your wallet, how about the way in which you try to pass yourself off as a blue collar, working class stiff? I notice you didn't mention that you make over $90,000 US a year. It's hard to feel sorry for you when you make more money than most of our bosses.

And really, how does piracy, which occurs after the movie is made, affect you, who are paid before it's released? Are the producers going to say, "Well David, we have a feeling that people are going to pirate this movie and distribute it on the internet in a few months, so we're not going to pay you for building the sets!" or "Oh no, due to pirating, we'll only make $90 million on the next Schwarzenegger movie instead of $100 million! Sorry, David, looks like we're not going to make the movie after all!" David, you work for Fox. They're not going to go bankrupt because of piracy anytime soon. Maybe if you worked for a small, independent studio I would actually believe you. If there's anything threatening your job, it's the recent trend to digital effects and CGI which will eventually render set painters like yourself obsolete.

Talk about preaching to the converted. It should be painfully obvious that everyone in the theatre has already paid to see the movie, and are doing their part to fight piracy. Why are you whining to us? Why not attach this piece of propaganda to the start of the films that you send out to Oscar voters which inevitably end up on the internet? Those are the people who steal the money the movie industry rightfully earns by churning out classics like the sequel to Dude, Where's My Car?

Hmmm....notice the resemblance?

I'm not endorsing movie piracy per se, but there is no good reason why the theatres can't charge 5 dollars a ticket and still make a profit. Maybe if you stopped paying arrogant, self-absorbed jerkwads 20 million dollars a movie, you could lower ticket prices to the point where people would actually pay them. If I were a producer, Paul Walker would have to pay me 20 million dollars to be in my movie.

But please, if you're going to whine about movie piracy, David, find a more realistic way of doing it. No, wait, here's a better one: To the people responsible for these ads - please find a more believable spokesperson. And stop trying to make me feel guilty about it when everyone in the room wants David to shut the heck up so we can see Arnie blow stuff up/Cameron shake her ass/Stifler eat some new bodily fluid.

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